Pour une rhétorique flaubertienne

Abstract

Flaubert didn't write memoirs, he didn't keep a personal diary to be read later on. He wrote letters to be read immediately, where he presented his ideas, his remarks and his thoughts about art and mainly about literature which was the purpose of his life. Flaubert turned his monumental correspondence into a textbook. He turned his majestic correspondence into an art of writing or even more, into a treaty of rhetoric, as literary analysis sees rhetoric as comprising stylistics, poetics, history of literature and aesthetics. And these are precisely the themes Flaubert constantly addresses in his letters.